Yesterday, the Abdullah Abdullah campaign demanded of the United Nations, that Abdullah win the election for president of Afghanistan. The campaign gave the UN until today to do this.
“If by tomorrow morning our demands . . . are not accepted, our patience has ultimately run out,” said Manawi, who has been who was tasked by Abdullah with monitoring the recount.
U.S.-brokered accord to salvage Afghan presidential election faces new problems, Washington Post
The United Nations is in the unusual position of being able to determine the winner of a national election, because of the unusual nature of the U.S.-negotiated agreement between the two unelected candidates, for how one of them might now be elected.
"The 12 July agreement reached between Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Dr. Ashraf Ghani required that the two campaigns have joint oversight of the audit," said U.N. envoy Jan Kubis. "It is highly unusual for the parties in an electoral contest to be given such prominence in designing the procedures to audit its results or to have such a hands-on role in the actual physical auditing."
Afghanistan Presidential Vote Audit Hampered by Abdullah No-Show, Wall Street Journal
The Abdullah campaign has been highly successful in negotiating concessions, via the threat of civil war. Beyond just issues of how the election audit would be conducted, a unity government, a power-sharing arrangement, with a change to the structure of the Afghan government was agreed on, though the details of the unity agreement are disputed.
Negotiations about the agreement about the governance of Afghanistan have been conducted partly through a wild flurry of leaks to American newspapers.
Balkh governor Atta Mohammed Noor had once again threatened civil war, if Abdullah is not elected, via the Washington Post.
A powerful Afghan governor and former militia leader, who had threatened mass protests in the wake of the disputed presidential runoff in June, warned Wednesday of a “civil uprising” if the ongoing ballot recount proves biased and his candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, is not named the winner.
Key Abdullah ally warns of Afghan unrest if vote recount is ‘one-sided’, Washington Post
About which, an unnamed coterie of powerful Afghan officials had countered with a threat of a coup, via the
New York Times.
A coterie of powerful Afghan government ministers and officials with strong ties to the security forces are threatening to seize power if an election impasse that has paralyzed the country is not resolved soon.
Amid Election Impasse, Calls in Afghanistan for an Interim Government, New York Times
For reporting this story,
New York Times reporter Matt Rosenberg was ejected from Afghanistan, by the Karzai administration.
The Abdullah campaign then pressed for stronger audit standards, again via the New York Times.
Those officials said that the fraud had been directed by a coterie of presidential aides and ministers and managed in each province by government, election and security officials.
In Afghan Election, Signs of Systemic Fraud Cast Doubt on Many Votes, New York Times
The standards pressed for via
New York Times included statistical invalidation of results, rather than statistical selection for scrutiny.
One time-tested way to reject fraud is to throw out any ballot box that shows an overwhelming percentage for one candidate — 95 percent, for example.
If applied to the runoff, a trigger of 93 percent of votes in a polling station in favor of one candidate, which was advocated by the Abdullah team, would have removed one-third of the ballots, more than two million, from the count, according to a diplomat in Kabul.
In Afghan Election, Signs of Systemic Fraud Cast Doubt on Many Votes, New York Times
Having pressed its views, via
New York Times article, the Abdullah campaign then used what the
New York Times article said, to press its views.
The campaign also seized upon a New York Times report last week citing unnamed Western analysts who said they believed Ghani had committed enough fraud to win the election. Those officials said that the fraud had been directed by a coterie of presidential aides and ministers and managed in each province by government, election and security officials.
Abdullah withdraws from Afghan election review, Stars and Stripes
Which pretty much brings us back to where this diary begins, that the Abdullah campaign had demanded of the UN, yesterday, that the Abdullah should win the election.
The UN has not met the demand of the Abdullah campaign, so the campaign has once again walked away from the election process.
American and United Nations officials scrambled to salvage Afghanistan’s bitterly contested presidential election on Wednesday, after one candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, decided to boycott the internationally brokered audit of the vote.
American diplomats met with Mr. Abdullah in an effort to persuade him to continue negotiations aimed at forming a national unity government, according to aides to Mr. Abdullah.
Afghan Unity Government Effort in Doubt as Candidate Boycotts Election Audit, New York Times
Reuters says that this continued threat of civil war in Afghanistan, the interminable chaos there, the high potential for violence, is all very embarrassing.
Interminable chaos as Western forces pull out would be a huge embarrassment for those countries which have spent billions of dollars and lost about 3,500 soldiers in a bid to bring peace and stability.
Afghan candidate threatens to pull out of election process, Reuters